


Future Past

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Love, Love Confessions, Male-Female Friendship, Soulmates, Speculation, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 21:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13396149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: S5 speculation. Coulson finds Daisy in time to get answers.





	Future Past

He thinks he might know how to find her. What she would do if the world turned against her.

She is still a legend, even in these terrible times. A demigod who tore the world apart.

That’s how the story goes.

The truth is he knows her. He believes she tried to hold the world together, but it all still torn to pieces. But they still need answers, proof, to know what went wrong from someone who was there and survived.

He goes backwards, in time. Not to his time, but to one before, when there were still people that remember her walking the Earth.

Then he goes down. Deep into the cavern, where only the roaches go, much further from the surface. Self-exile. A prison.

She’s alone, but the space is crowded with things that register with strange familiarity. A hulu girl, a record player, and he moves slowly further inside the container that was dropped here.

The hand is the first thing that appears, stretched out at him, wrapped in strips of tattered cloth.

“Daisy.”

The whisper of her name, eyes wide, and the hand softens and lowers, still shaking or trying to hold steady.

“Phil?”

The voice is hers, but wrapped in time. Like a recording from the future, but he’s in the future.

“Yes,” he answers, lowering his raised hands and tilting his head to try to see her eyes past her hooded visage.

She laughs quietly, and puts her hand to her hidden face. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

“Help me, Daisy Johnson,” he asks, moving closer to her now. “You’re my only hope.”

Her hands raise to lower the hood, and he would know her anywhere, in any time and place. Her eyes are still big and brown, her bottom lids fuller, especially when she smiles like now, making wrinkles appear as the corners. He finds himself smiling uncontrollably at the sight.

“Still charming as ever,” she says dryly. “They finally sent you?”

The Daisy he remembers is somewhere else and he finds just being in the room with her brings all his painful yearnings back.

“You’ve been waiting for me?” It doesn’t surprise him she’s aware of the prophecy as well, that Robin could’ve shared a vision-

“If I wanted me to come back,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her. “I would’ve sent you, too.”

The idea certainly makes him curious, but she motions him forward and moves to a shelf and digs through it for awhile until she find what she’s looking for.

“Drink?” She says, turning over her shoulder.

“Sure,” he says with a smirk.

 

###

 

“I didn’t desert them, you know. They asked me to leave. It’s complicated.”

“I didn’t think you did,” he tells her, taking a sip of the whisky.

She looks pleased at that, brushing away a loose white streak of hair. “That’s the Phil I remember. And your eyes.”

The smile starts to fall from her face the longer she stares at him, her eyes clouding. “You were about this age.”

“When what?” he asks carefully, leaning towards her, reaching out his hand to touch hers.

“When I lost you,” she tells him, staring down at his hand on hers.

“We can change all of that,” he tells her, squeezing her fingers. “You won’t have to be down here alone. The Earth will be safe.”

“It was just to stop them from making more like me, Phil. They said I caused it, I was too powerful. And I did fail them.”

“Help me to stop it,” he asks, then gets up again to put another piece of broken furniture in the furnace, returning to his makeshift seat. “They have your genetic material now, but it’s not too late.”

“It’s the Gravitonium. It’s what’s inside it. Do you remember?” She pauses to watch the shock register with him.

“Hall,” he gasps out.

“He wanted to punish you. He waited all this time. He said time was nothing to him, that he was a god. They didn’t know it was alive.”

“And you tried to stop him,” he asks, squeezing her fingers.

“You wanted to stop it,” she sighs, turning her face away. “You blamed yourself. And I tried to save you. I wasn’t ready-“

“It’s not your fault.”

His fingers touch the side of her face, and she meets his eyes again, Daisy’s eyes in another time and place.

“I wasn’t ready to let you go.”

 

###

 

He wakes in the morning to the buzz of an alarm and feels the pressure of time.

That his time here is ending.

Daisy is up and awake, looking through bits of writings, and making him something warm to drink.

“Thanks,” he says as he takes it, curling his legs up into the chair, and looking at the display on his prosthetic.

“It’s been good to see you, Phil,” she tells him, pressing her hand familiarly to his shoulder. “Thank you for finding me.”

Just when she’s about to pull away, he takes her hand in his again, and holds onto it.

“I never wanted you to be alone,” he says to her, a painful twist in his chest at the thought of leaving this Daisy, any Daisy.

“I know,” she says, letting go and moving to fix herself a cup. “I think that’s what made me fall for you.”

That makes him smile again, and he takes a sip of the warm liquid, some kind of sweet tasting tea. “You mean it wasn’t the flying car?”

“If you ever run into my other self, you should ask her about it,” she tells him with a raise of her eyebrows.

He pushes the blanket off his legs and sets his cup down, standing. He can already feel the air charging around him.

“What do I-“

“Ask, Phillip,” she answers with a lopsided smile.

Then, she’s gone to the future.

He’s further in the past, and he can’t stop thinking about her words.

 

###

 

“That...was messy.”

“It could’ve gone a lot worse,” he answers, staring down into the hole where the Gravitonium sits, spinning benignly.

She doesn’t look very amused at his understatement, in fact she’s frowning at him and trying to catch her breath, still with a tight grip on his arm.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells her quietly, turning his face to look at hers, wondering if she looks just as out of sorts as he does.

“Right,” she says with a swallow, releasing his arm and stepping back from the hole.

“You should never have to do this alone,” he goes on, taking her elbow in his hand to steady her as he helps her down the debris hill.

“This kind of power is dangerous,“ she says, trying to smooth her hair, speaking like she’s agreeing with him, and exhausted, when he stops them.

“No. No, it’s not like that,” he says quietly, shaking his head when her expression turns curious.

“Like what, then?” she asks, leaning closer, lowering her tone to match his. “Coulson, I can practically rip continents apart.”

“Or hold them together,” he says, gesturing to her. “Holding things together is important. Maybe the most important thing?”

“Is this about the Director job again?” she starts in. “Because, I don’t think Talbot is going to-“

“I don’t want to do this without you,” he interrupts, giving her a serious glance.

“Oh.”  She pauses, startled for a moment, then meets his eyes and starts to smile. “I’ve always liked that about you.”

“You mean it wasn’t the cool car?” he replies, finding himself grinning at her, thinking about a future past for a moment.

“The cool car helped,” she smiles back. It’s the same smile in any time or place.

Daisy’s smile.

Daisy’s eyes.

Daisy’s kiss.


End file.
